"Degrading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those passions, easily supposed the afflatus of some preternatural power, and easily, therefore, susceptible of personification. And the pride of men, more especially if habitually courageous and warlike, will gladly yield to the credulities which shelter a degrading and unwonted infirmity beneath the agency of a superior being. TERROR, therefore, received a shape and found an altar probably as early at least as the heroic age. According to Plutarch, Theseus sacrificed to Terror previous to his battle with the Amazons;—an idle tale, it is true, but proving, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Morelo, Jalisco, Chapas, Quintana Roo and Tabasco. This land is well under cultivation. The population (on a rough estimate, without the advantages of a scientific census) is from three to four millions. The inhabitants are nearly all peons, who for centuries had existed in a degrading state of slavery. More than ninety-five per cent. can ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... formally, to protect himself from the sort of personality which he dreaded. The whole situation needed the most careful management lest it should degenerate into some degrading and disturbing exhibition such as the scene, which he could never think of without shame, upon the heath among the dead leaves. And yet each sentence brought him relief. He was coming to understand something or other about his own desires hitherto undefined ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... nature; artless, and apparently as much afraid of us, and as shy, as other animals of the forest. It seemed strange, that in a climate the most resembling that of Milton's paradise, the circumstances of man's existence should be the most degrading. Latitude of our camp, 29 deg. 19' 26" S. Thermometer, at sunrise, 55 deg.; at noon, 100 deg.; at 4 P. M., 101 deg.; at 9, 70 deg.;—with wet bulb, 65 deg.. The mean elevation above the sea of our camps thus far on the Narran, seven in number, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... twaddle or sheer want to talk about the dignity and beauty of labor under this system," he went on. "It is ugly and degrading. The fools or hypocrites who talk that way ought to be forced to join the gangs of slaves at their tasks in factory and mine and shop, in the fields and the streets. And even the easier and better paid tasks, even what the capitalists ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... last hope with it. Elise had conquered. Her letter had brought him face to face with those realities which, during this week of madness, he had simply refused to see. He could pit himself against her no longer. When it came to the point he had not the nerve to enter upon a degrading and ignoble conflict, in which all that was to be won was her hatred or her fear. That, indeed, would be the last and worst ruin, for it would be the ruin, not of happiness or of hope, but of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... victory, seemed to triumph in obtaining what fortune alone had put them in possession of. To murmur at their treatment was only to expose ourselves to repeated and more provoking insults; to resist was only hazarding our lives. We were therefore obliged, however degrading in our own opinion, to submit to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Amy had no extravagant aspirations; a home of simple refinement and freedom from anxiety would restore her to her nobler self. How could he find fault with her? She knew nothing of such sordid life as he had gone through, and to lack money for necessities seemed to her degrading beyond endurance. Why, even the ordinary artisan's wife does not suffer such privations as hers at the end of the past year. For lack of that little money his life must be ruined. Of late he had often thought about the rich uncle, John Yule, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... in that work is most emphatic. "The whole commerce between master and slave," he says, "is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it.... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... asked too much, you have pleaded the fear of ridicule, but you could not understand that you were consenting to buy me—me—your wife! You wished to possess me for a little, as a sort of variation to your usual list, although your heart must have told you that it was degrading to me to be placed on such a plane. You did not recoil from such an idea, but pursued it, just as you pursue them, and the more eagerly, because I was more expensive. But you have deceived yourself, not me. Not thus will you ever regain possession of your wife. Adieu, Monsieur! ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... are here on false pretences, and we stay here no longer,' he said. 'Had you still loved me, right or wrong, I should have taken you away, because then I could have made you happy. But as it is - I must speak plainly - what you propose is degrading to you, and an insult to me, and a rank unkindness to your father. Your father may be this or that, but you should use ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not in words, but in deeds. It said, "We have come to an end. We have been robbed of the rights guaranteed to us by the Kansas-Nebraska bill. We have been robbed of the rights of American citizens. We have been given the alternative of abject and degrading submission or of extermination. And now we make our answer. We will return blow for blow, wound for wound, stripe for stripe, and burning for burning. Murder shall be paid back with murder, robbery with robbery; and every act of aggression shall be paid back with swift and terrible ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... none of that rioting or confusion by which an assembly of the middling classes in England is too often disgraced; no quarrelling or intoxication even among the poorest ranks, and little appearance of that degrading want which destroys the pleasing idea of public happiness. The people appear all to enjoy a certain share of individual prosperity; their intercourse is conducted with unbroken harmony, and they seem to resign themselves to those delightful feelings ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... his large hospitable hand at the full length of his arm, and spread abroad his wide chest to greet him, and they went through the ceremony of shaking hands,—which, even in their case, I cannot judge so degrading and hypocritical as the Latin nations seem to consider it. Then Wingfold had ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... impeachment of Judge Chase, which aroused very strong feelings, Mr. Adams was fortunately able to vote for acquittal. He regarded this measure, as well as the impeachment of Judge Pickering at the preceding session, as parts of an elaborate scheme on the part of the President for degrading the national judiciary and rendering it subservient to the legislative branch of the government. So many, however, even of Mr. Jefferson's stanch adherents revolted against his requisitions on this occasion, and he himself so far lost heart before the final ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Johann, Beethoven's two younger brothers, of whom no previous mention has been made, were engaged, the one in studying music, and the other as apprentice to the Court apothecary, but neither was bringing grist to the mill. The father had sunk still deeper under the degrading influence of drink, and his voice was almost ruined by his excesses, so that it had become increasingly difficult to maintain for the family even the appearance of respectability. On more than one occasion Beethoven, in returning ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... notwithstanding all that could be said for it, there was something in her heart which told her it was wrong, and she admitted all I said. Since my last argument on this subject, it has appeared to me in another light. I remarked that a Carolina mistress was literally a slave-driver, and that I thought it degrading to the female character. The mistress is as great a slave to her servants, in some respects, as they are to her. One thing which annoys me very much is the constant orders that are given. Really, when I go into mother's room to read to her, I am continually interrupted by a variety of orders which ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the welfare of the state. Then it was subverted, as Napoleon rode into absolute dominion over the bridge which the Revolution had built. And the Roman constitution was remarkable, not only because it prevented a degrading subjection of the masses, even while it refused them the rights of government, but because it maintained a balance among the governing classes themselves, and restricted the usurpations of powerful families, as well as military heroes. For nearly five ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... is this delight of self-interest and cupidity, wallowing in the slough of the 2nd of December! Faith! let us live, let us go into business, let us speculate in zinc and railway shares, let us make money; it is degrading but it is an excellent thing; a scruple less, a louis more; let us sell our whole soul at that rate. One runs to and fro, one rushes about, one cools his heels in anterooms, one drinks deep of every kind of shame, and if one cannot get a concession of railways in France or of lands in Africa, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... sin? Could anyone tell, with the uneven standard set up by morality and religion? The world smiled upon a loveless marriage. What more degrading? It frowned upon a love perfect in all but the sanction of the Church, if the two had the courage to proclaim their love. It discreetly looked another way when the harlot of "Society" tripped by with her husband on one hand and her lover on the other. A man enriched himself at the ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... horse-power,—an animal tread-mill in fact. Whether the horses working this were here on good behaviour, or not, I could not rightly ascertain, but certainly they were scampish-looking steeds, their physiognomical expression was low and dogged, such as one might expect from the degrading nature ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... an active and willing young man. The foreign girl fills in her time bricklaying and grooming down the horses. It is a young and charming lady who serves you when you enter the tobacconist's. She doesn't understand tobacco, is unsympathetic; with Mr. Frederic Harrison, regards smoking as a degrading and unclean habit; cannot see, herself, any difference between shag and Mayblossom, seeing that they are both the same price; thinks you fussy. The corset shop is run by a most presentable young man in a Vandyck beard. The wife runs the restaurant; the man does the cooking, and yet the woman ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... of their nature will be coloring all their activities. It will beautify their arts, and erotically confuse their religions. It will lend a little interest to even their dull social functions. It will keep alive .degrading social evils in all their great towns. Through these latter evils, too, their politics will be corrupted; especially their best and most democratic attempts at self-government. Self-government works best among those who have ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... me to stand with confidence in his Royal presence on the happy day of his recovery;—and, on the contrary, that those who, under color of respect and attachment to his Royal person, have contrived this project for enfeebling and degrading the executive authority of the realm, will be considered by him as having risked the happiness of his people and the security of the throne itself, by establishing a fatal precedent which may hereafter ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... mine with the Noo Zeeling savages, after cutting away from his ship; but our old skipper said he ought to be ashamed of hisself for going and living that way, and them beginning to tattoo him in a pattern. He said he was a-degrading of hisself, and fetched him aboard, saying as if he wanted tattooing some of his messmates should mark his back with a rope's end. No, sir, we thinks a deal o' that monkey—our crew does—and we don't want to see ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... convinced, whether rightly or wrongly, that he knows all about his own ideas that needs to be known. Byron never did thus know himself, either morally or intellectually. The higher part of him was consciously dragged down by the degrading reminiscence of the brutishness of his youth and its connections and associations; they hung like miasma over his spirit. He could not rise to that sublimest height of moral fervour, when a man intrepidly chases from his memory past evil done, suppresses the recollection of old corruptions, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... one of those numerous violations of the marriage vow which she feels certain he has committed. It is a cruel resort, but the law which permits a man to outrage a woman in almost every other way frowns upon that one, and she is driven to it as the sole method of release from an intolerable and degrading bondage. In such cases as this might perhaps be found some justification for the existence of private detectives; but they themselves do not appear to know that they stand in need of extenuation, and so neglect the opportunity thus presented to vindicate their necessity ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... said the Marquis, "you may be confident; I myself felt the delicacy of the matter too much to place a gentleman nearly connected with my house in a degrading or dubious situation with these Ashtons. But I pointed out all the advantages of their marrying their daughter into a house so honourable, and so nearly related with the first of Scotland; I explained ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... after sin and to hide one's corruption from the sight of men. But that time was over. Now it was God's turn: and He was not to be hoodwinked or deceived. Every sin would then come forth from its lurking place, the most rebellious against the divine will and the most degrading to our poor corrupt nature, the tiniest imperfection and the most heinous atrocity. What did it avail then to have been a great emperor, a great general, a marvellous inventor, the most learned of the learned? ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... notable projects in hand. If my son had delayed four-and-twenty hours longer in removing the Duc du Maine from the King it would have been decided to declare His Majesty of full age; but my son frustrated this by dismissing the Duke, and degrading him at the same time. The Chief President is said to have been so frightened that he remained motionless, as if he had been petrified by a gaze at the head of Medusa. That celebrated personage of antiquity could not have been more a fury than Madame du Maine; she threatened dreadfully, and did ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... and minds of mankind with this notion of a God ruling over the world. They have also invented for the people the notion of another world, in which their God is to punish with eternal torture (not a Bible term) those who have refused to obey their degrading laws here on earth. This God is nothing but the personification of absolute tyranny, and has been invented with a view of either frightening or alluring nine-tenths of the human race into submission to the remaining tenth. If there were really a God, surely he would use that lightning which he holds ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... us'd only upon slight Subjects, where no real Abilities or Merit are questioned, in order to avoid degrading the Person you attack, or rendering him contemptible; Whereas Ridicule observes no such Decency, but endeavours really to degrade the Person attack'd, and to render ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... nothing to be gained in reviewing that unhappy affair," continued the other. "Your mother's family are headlong, impulsive, fiery, unstable, emotional. There was a last shameful and degrading scene. I offered her a separation; but she was unwisely persuaded to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the countess, "most degrading experience of all, Hatszegi no longer attempts to conceal from his wife his outrageous liaisons with pretty peasant women. The thing has long been a byeword, though his wife knew nothing of it—but ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... which he more than once paid dearly, for they were remembered against him when be had forgotten them. Meanwhile Clodius—a sort of milder Catiline, not without many popular qualities—had got himself elected tribune; degrading himself formally from his own order of nobles for that purpose, since the tribune must be a man of the commons. The powers of the office were formidable for all purposes of obstruction and attack; Clodius had taken pains to ingratiate himself with all classes; and the consuls of the year were ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... of his own honesty when he cannot let his words stand for themselves. It betokens a blasphemous disrespect for God Himself, represented by that name which is made a convenient tool to further every vulgar end. It is therefore criminal and degrading, and the guilt thereby incurred cannot be palliated by the plea of habit. A sin is none the less a sin because it is one of a great many. Vice is criminal. The victim of a vice can be considered less guilty only on condition of seriously combating that vice. Failing ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... from light weight beneath; and it is in the unity derived from this higher pervading, yet not too assertive "invisible reality," that Stevenson most often fails, and is, in his own words, "execrable"; the ending shaming, if not degrading, the beginning—"and without the true sense of pleasurableness; and therefore really imperfect in essence." Ah, it is to be feared that Stevenson, viewing it in retrospect, was a far truer critic of his own work, than many or most of his all too effusive and admiring critics—from Lord Rosebery ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... dishonesty, cast a deep shade over that bright prospect which the Revolution in America and the establishment of our free governments had opened to the votaries of liberty throughout the globe. I fear, and there is no opinion more degrading to the dignity of man, that those have truth on their side who say that man is incapable ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... here? The original calamity was either caused by God or arose without leave of God, in either case degrading God to man. It is the old dilemma whose horns are the irreconcilable attributes of goodness and omniscience in the supposed Creator of sin and suffering. If the one quality be predicable, the other cannot be predicable of the same subject. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... enthusiasm so often excited by tragic excellence. The thing to be dreaded with the great bulk of the spectators—that is, by far the largest portion of mankind—is not their avowed infidelity and their open wickedness; it is the sway of the degrading or selfish passions which is chiefly dangerous. The thing to be feared is, not that they will say there is no God, but that they will live altogether without God in the world. How important, then, that genius should be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... people disappointed Robert. In the work of moving in he had to do with people who work at day's work, and the fault was his more than theirs. He forgot that they did not consider their work degrading. They resented his bossing. The drayman ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... say that the foregoing considerations are all strictly applicable to SUCH AS FURNISH THE MATERIALS for the distiller. Were these withheld, his degrading occupation would of course cease. By suffering, then, the fruits of your industry to pass into his hands, you perpetuate his work of death. You share all his guilt, and shame, and curse. And remember, too, that the bushel of grain, the barrel of cider, the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... could say in what a proper sitting consisted, though all depended on that; for they went to and fro on the horse without stirrups. Moreover, the instruction seemed contrived only for cheating and degrading the scholars. If one forgot to hook or loosen the curb-chain, or let his switch fall down, or even his hat,—every delay, every misfortune, had to be atoned for by money; and one was laughed at into the bargain. This put me in the worst of humors, particularly as I found the place of exercise ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Millet's paintings. From the very first those who care only for the subject of a picture have condemned it, while the critics have praised its artistic qualities. Many have thought that Millet made the subject as unpleasant as possible in order to show the degrading effects of work. The same theory was suggested when the Sower and the Gleaners appeared. The painter himself was much troubled by these misunderstandings. "I have never dreamed of being a pleader in any cause," he said. He simply painted life as he saw it, and had no thought of ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... for I believe it is not for sale,) is made up of extracts from Blackwood; and I thought that a contest with your grog-drinking, cock-fighting, cudgel-playing Professor of Moral Philosophy would be too degrading. I could have demolished every paragraph of the defence. Croker defended his thuetoi philoi by quoting a passage of Euripides which, as every scholar knows, is corrupt; which is nonsense and false metre if read as ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... behalf of the outcasts of their sex readily exposed the English women to misrepresentation and degrading remarks from the quarter of narrow-minded men, the women did not allow themselves to be held back from energetically opposing the introduction of the law that was an insult to their sex. In newspaper articles and pamphlets the "pros" and "cons" were ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... This settles the question of the right of inheritance, which Socialism will have no need to abolish formally."[322] "Socialism condemns as reactionary and immoral all that tends to the debasement of humanity. It condemns our industrial and commercial system as a degrading system—degrading both to the few who amass wealth and to the many who by their labour enable the few to lay up riches. It is degrading to those who rob and to those who are robbed; to those who cheat and to those who are cheated; to those who swim and ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... muck of yellow journalism, with its hideous colored supplements and spine-thrilling tales. So much for the reader. But the publisher himself—well, he battens materially, of course, upon the tired victims of our degrading social system. He sees but the sordid revenue in dollars and cents. Beyond that ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... think I see him now, and I am certain that I shall never forget the expression of his face. It was perfectly fearful; and afterwards, when I learned who and what he was, I was not surprised that he should feel so acutely the painfully degrading office which he ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... him as plainly as can be: he wants me to find out gold, or tin and precious stones, and other things for his benefit. It is degrading to ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... illness, every woman is sterile. Conception may be avoided by refraining from coition except for this particular number of days, and there will be no evasion of natural intercourse, no resort to disgusting practices, and nothing degrading. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... forward; he made a speech of some length, and one that was very impressive. Nothing could be more clear, more just, more true, than the picture he drew of the manifold evils of intemperance; a vice so deceitful in its first appearance, so treacherous in its growth; so degrading, so brutalizing in its enjoyments; so blasting and ruinous in its effects—ruinous to body and mind, heart and soul—blasting all hopes for this life and for the next, so long as it remains unconquered. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... difference? From everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the disgrace was intolerable. At that moment he hated Dr Rowlands, he hated Mr Gordon, he hated his school-fellows, he hated everybody. He had been flogged; the thought haunted him; he, Eric Williams, had been forced to receive this most degrading corporal punishment. He pushed fiercely through the knot of boys, and strode as quickly as he could along the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... do none of these things, though I have three boys of my own. That is not out of disrespect to you, but because I think it would be unbeseeming to me. Such displays, as though death were something altogether terrifying, are to me astonishing and degrading to our city in the sight of strangers, for persons reputed to excel in anything, as in some respects I am held to ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... against this degrading habit with determined resolution. Let neither the example, nor the solicitations, nor the taunting jests of your companions, induce you to demean yourself so far, as to be guilty of a vice so utterly unworthy ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... homage to fictitious rank of every kind. A vulgar millionaire of the Fifth Avenue, and a foreign adventurer with a meaningless title, are equally objects of their misplaced deference. Losing sight of their own manhood and self-respect, they descend to the most degrading sycophancy. We have little hope of benefiting them. They are "joined to their idols; let ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... race-survival were forced on and hastened by the cruelties against which Las Casas protested in vain, but the triumphal march of human progress has followed on. Cannibalism, idolatry, slavery, and other barbarisms have disappeared from the American continents; the Christian religion has replaced degrading superstitions, agriculture and commerce flourish, while literature and the arts adorn life in the several republics, whose meanest citizen enjoys a security of life and property unknown to the proudest of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... heart. The guilty, I believe, in every case, less patiently bear the detecting truth, than the innocent do the degrading falshood. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... which had so ruthlessly tormented Nedopyuskin the father, took to the son too; she had a taste for them, one must suppose. But she treated Tihon on a different plan: she did not torture him; she played with him. She did not once drive him to desperation, she did not set him to suffer the degrading agonies of hunger, but she led him a dance through the whole of Russia from one end to the other, from one degrading and ludicrous position to another; at one time Fate made him 'majordomo' to a snappish, choleric Lady Bountiful, at another a ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... have, the most remote suspicion of this Barratt's connection with the shop which he had not accidentally entered; and the sudden appearance of this wretch it was, at the very moment of finding herself charged with so vile and degrading an offence, that contributed most of all to rob her of her natural firmness, by suddenly revealing to her terrified heart the depth of the conspiracy which thus yawned like a gulf below her. And not only had this sudden horror, upon discovering a guilty design ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... him they compelled to carry the cross of Jesus. No Roman or Jew would have voluntarily incurred the ignominy of bearing such a gruesome burden; for every detail connected with the carrying out of a sentence of crucifixion was regarded as degrading. The man so forced to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, bearing the cross upon which the Savior of the world was to consummate His glorious mission, was Simon, a native of Cyrene. From Mark's statement that ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... many now who would introduce a system of schooling without correction; and who maintain that the present system is degrading." ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... what forces he may be brought in contact beyond the veil? Initiation which leads to making use of spiritual forces, whether good or evil, is therefore capable of raising man to greater heights or of degrading him to lower depths than he could ever have reached by remaining on the purely physical plane. And when men thus unite themselves in associations, a collective force is generated which may exercise immense influence over the world around. Hence ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... barbarizing of taste in the younger minds by the dark madness of the late war, the unabashed cultivation of selfishness in all classes, the plethoric growth of knowledge simultaneously with the stunting of wisdom, "a degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation" (to quote Wordsworth again), or from any other cause, we seem threatened with a new ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... her lord in anger, looking at him, 'Knowing everything, O monarch, how canst thou, like an inferior person, thus say that thou knowest it not? Thy heart is a witness to the truth or falsehood of this matter. Therefore, speak truly without degrading thyself. He who being one thing representeth himself as another thing to others, is like a thief and a robber of his own self. Of what sin is he not capable? Thou thinkest that thou alone hast knowledge of thy deed. But knowest thou not that the Ancient, Omniscient one (Narayana) liveth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that the Rhamdas, superintellectual as they are, can consent to such a contest? Is it not degrading, to their way of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... he had had no such intention the night before; an accumulated mail and many matters demanding decisions were awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an act directed personally against her, in the nature of a retaliation, since she had offended and repulsed him. Through Lise's degrading act she had arrived at the conclusion that all adventure and consequent suffering had to do with Man—a conviction peculiarly maddening to such temperaments as Janet's. Therefore she interpreted her suffering in terms of Ditmar, she had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Peter can contrive a way of keeping our heads above water without having recourse to these detestable methods, I shall be only too relieved. I loathe having to traffic with these dirty swindlers; it's too insufferably wearying and degrading.... By the way, Peter, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... have been degrading for Sir Wulfric de Talbot,' said Jane dreamily, 'if he could have known that half the ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... was angry at Thrale, for sitting at General Oglethorpe's without speaking. He censured a man for degrading himself to a non-entity. I observed, that Goldsmith was on the other extreme; for he spoke at all ventures. JOHNSON. 'Yes, sir; Goldsmith, rather than not speak, will talk of what he knows himself to be ignorant, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... he had found them useful instruments; but he was not disposed to make them his own masters, or the masters of India. His mind was large; his knowledge of the native character most accurate. He saw that the system pursued by the Supreme Court was degrading to the Government and ruinous to the people; and he resolved to oppose it manfully. The consequence was, that the friendship, if that be the proper word for such a connection, which had existed between him and Impey, was for a time completely dissolved. The Government placed itself firmly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... side, or elsewhere—that upon which his life actually depends, is too precious to be risked beyond his care. Why should he be blamed then for the apparent "filth" which surrounds it? Whether is it his fault, or that of the system which has driven him to this degrading necessity? ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... he richly deserved. And who should say that all was not upon the whole for the best as it had pleased heaven to cause it to fall out? The Marchese Lamberto was saved, despite his own folly, from a disgraceful and degrading marriage; and Ludovico was saved from ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... was purchased by bribery, for Ivan condescended to buy the interference of a Tartar princess. So slavish and degrading was his outward seeming that his wife, a noble and spirited lady, the daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium, could with difficulty prevail upon him to forego the humiliating usages which had hitherto attended the reception of the Mongol ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... will be doomed to the undying contempt of those who cultivate the mysterious and the sublime—Mr. Blotton, we say, with the doubt and cavilling peculiar to vulgar minds, presumed to state a view of the case, as degrading as ridiculous. Mr. Blotton, with a mean desire to tarnish the lustre of the immortal name of Pickwick, actually undertook a journey to Cobham in person, and on his return, sarcastically observed in an oration at the club, that he had seen the man from whom the stone was purchased; that the man ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... felt in the presence of Napoleon would not be credited in England. His courtiers literally trembled before him. 'In what sort of a humour is the Emperor to-day?' was a frequent question in Paris.... How I have blushed for the adulation, the degrading, I may almost say the blasphemous flattery that has been offered before the throne of Napoleon by men of the highest rank. But perhaps I ought to make some allowance for those who had witnessed the horrors of the Revolution. Can, however, such men be expected to recover the high tone of feeling ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... self-will and independence, whether for good or evil, so their reverence for their abbots was a voluntary loyalty to one who they fancied had a right to rule them, because he was wiser and better than they; a feeling which some have found not degrading, but ennobling; and the parent, not of servility, but of true freedom. And as for the obsolete virtue of humility, that still remains true which a voice said to Antony, when he saw the snares which were spread over the whole earth, and asked, sighing, "Who can pass safely over these?" ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... continuing to farm, Pestalozzi now tried to express his faith in education in printed form. His Leonard and Gertrude (1781) was a wonderfully beautiful story of Swiss peasant life, and of the genius and sympathy and love of a woman amid degrading surroundings. From a wretched place the village of Bonnal, under Pestalozzi's pen, was transformed by the power of education. [7] The book was a great success from the first, and for it Pestalozzi was ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Theresa thirty years before; it vanished, along with most of the legal distinctions of class, wherever the victories of France carried a new political order; even the misused peasantry of Poland had been freed from their degrading yoke within the borders of the newly-founded Duchy of Warsaw. If Prussia was not to renounce its partnership in European progress and range itself with its barbarous eastern neighbour, that order which fettered the peasant to the soil, and limited every Prussian to the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Laetitia had formerly chafed at it, rejecting it utterly, save when now and then in a season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile young lady (none but the young) to be stamped with the degrading brand. Vernon might be as philosophical as he pleased. To her the gaiety of these two, Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton, was distressingly musical: they harmonized painfully. The representative of her sex was hurt ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that the greatest number possible of his brothers should participate in the succor offered. He addresses himself, in the first place, to honest, industrious workmen, with families, whom the want of work often reduces to the most cruel extremities. It is not a degrading alms which he gives to his brothers but a gratuitous loan which he offers. May this loan, as he hopes, prevent them often from resorting to those cruel pledges which they are forced to make (while awaiting the return of work), for the purpose of sustaining a family of ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... turn them from their evil intentions. Of the principal officers of the ship the master alone had hitherto escaped destruction. He was no coward. He had seen with horror the murder of his messmates and captain, but life was sweet, and when offered to him, even on terms degrading, undoubtedly—that he would navigate the ship into an enemy's port—he accepted them. The few warrant and petty officers who had escaped being killed, at once declared their intention of acting as ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... you about the fun,' Borrodaile objected. 'That's why I'm glad they've had their lesson. I should say there was almost nothing more degrading than this public spectacle of——' Borrodaile lifted his high shoulders higher still, with an effect of intense discomfort. 'It never but once came my way that I remember, but I'm free to own,' he said, 'there's nothing that ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... as to their parents; that the parents have a right to claim this relationship and its privileges for their children until such children are excluded from the Church by the lawful acts of its executive authorities. Otherwise, the youth baptized by our ministry are in the most pitiful and degrading religious position of the youth of any Church that recognizes the doctrine of infant baptism; and it appears to me that we ought rather not to baptize infants at all, or recommend their parents to take them to other churches for baptism, than thus to treat the feelings of such ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... but will there be no one to remind you that in your old age you were not ashamed to violate the most sacred laws from a miserable desire of a little more life? Perhaps not, if you keep them in a good temper; but if they are out of temper you will hear many degrading things; you will live, but how?—as the flatterer of all men, and the servant of all men; and doing what?—eating and drinking in Thessaly, having gone abroad in order that you may get a dinner. And where will be your fine sentiments ...
— Crito • Plato
... of course, Caroline," replied the other; "but I trust, my poor girl, that if you see him, you will act both wisely and firmly. Let him not move you to yield any farther than you have done; left him not move you, my sweet Caroline, to remain in a degrading and painful state of doubt. Act firmly, and as you proposed but yesterday, in order, at least, if you do no more, not to be, as it were, an accomplice in his ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... feeling herself awkward in the discharge of the extraordinary, and, as she might have thought it, degrading office of ushering a barbarian chief to the banquet, felt, on the contrary, flattered, at having bent to her purpose a heart so obstinate as that of Count Robert, and elated, perhaps, with a certain degree of satisfied pride while ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... and his resolutions melted away before this discovery. There was nothing to be done but to save the poor girl from this miserable and degrading attachment, and its ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Monsieur Massot," said he. "How disgusting all that parliamentary cooking is! You ought to point it out in an article, and show people how the country is gradually being weakened and rotted to the marrow by all such useless and degrading discussions. Why, a great battle resulting in the loss of 50,000 men would exhaust us less than ten years of this abominable parliamentary system. You must call on me some morning. I will show you a scheme of military ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... delight,' as the French call them, pure and simple. She told me point blank that she preferred her present mode of life to respectability, and that she considered that taking even my money or Vane's, when she had no real claim upon us, was more degrading and would hurt her self-respect a great deal more than doing what she is doing. In other respects she's as good a girl as ever walked, and as honest as the daylight, but I'm afraid there is no hope of ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... her ill-fated and ill-regulated love, were matter of admiration and pity; especially when, from the detail of the events of the nineteenth of October, it was apparent that she preferred suffering and death to any in her eyes degrading application for the pity and assistance of her lover. Her subsequent conduct did not diminish this interest. At first, relieved from famine and the grave, watched over by Raymond with the tenderest assiduity, with that feeling of repose ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... grossly mistaken the ideas of Rousseau. Do you discover a symptom of it? Far otherwise. You see only confidence and love. That jealousy for which you are an advocate, he condemns as appertaining to brutes and sensualists. Discard, I beseech you, ideas so degrading to true love. I am mortified with the reflection that they ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... study door, and still more from the faces of his father and uncle, he guessed that they must have been talking of his mother. And to avoid condemning the father with whom he lived and on whom he was dependent, and, above all, to avoid giving way to sentimentality, which he considered so degrading, Seryozha tried not to look at his uncle who had come to disturb his peace of mind, and not to think of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... that she heard him aright. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks in testimony to the audacity of the insult. Coming from this man such an avowal inspired her with rage and disgust. He, the society costermonger, sighing at her feet! Bah! It seemed too degrading to be true. It could not be true. And yet there he was and a response was necessary. A politic response, too, or all was lost. If she rejected him he would have her arrested. Her ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... asleep, when a party of Moors entered the hut, and pulled away the cloak. He made signs that he was sick, and wished to sleep, but his distress afforded sport to these savages. "This studied and degrading insolence," says Mr. Park, "to which I was constantly exposed, was one of the bitterest ingredients in the cup of captivity, and often made life itself a burthen to me. In these distressing moments I have frequently envied ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... is the doctrine of no indemnity, and if sanctioned would be a public acknowledgment that our country was wrong and that the war declared by Congress with extraordinary unanimity was unjust and should be abandoned—an admission unfounded in fact and degrading to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... heart, whose influence had strengthened and comforted her, in the chapel of the Refuge. One of the finest passages in his sermon had been especially devoted by Julian Gray to warning the congregation whom he addressed against the degrading influences of falsehood and deceit. The terms in which he had appealed to the miserable women round him—terms of sympathy and encouragement never addressed to them before—came back to Mercy Merrick as if she had heard them an hour since. ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... Not until he was returning—not, indeed, until he entered the house did the whiff of its degrading, heated odours bring home to him the tragedy which it held, and he grasped the banister on the stairs. The thought that shook him now was of the cumulative misery of the city, of the world, of which this history on which he had stumbled was but one insignificant ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... what to answer. He felt as if a judgment were coming on him, and a shameful degrading from his knightly rank. Suddenly Folko drew him away from the shield, and taking him towards the rattling window, he asked: ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... had yet united the guilty Caroline to Vargrave was broken,—a woman forgives sin in her lover, but never meanness. The degrading, the abject position in which she had seen one whom she had served as a slave (though, as yet, all his worst villanies were unknown to her), filled her with shame, horror, and disgust. She rose abruptly, and quitted the room. They did ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deceived: but he was unwilling to despise the characters of those men whose talents deserved his esteem: he desired to escape the double reproach of imprudence and inconstancy; and he was apprehensive of degrading, in the eyes of the profane, the honor of letters and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... consider some of the appendages to the theory, such as the assertion of the essential unity of the human and the brute intellect, the denial of the immaterial nature of mind, and the advocacy of the system of phrenology. These absurd and degrading doctrines are naturally connected with the atheistic hypothesis we have been considering. They are its legitimate children. But they have already been refuted so often and so conclusively, that any revival of them at the present day is hardly deserving of notice. If we should stop here, then, it ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... the thought that there is not a flower, not a colour, not a breath of air, which has not absorbed the minds and stirred the hearts of other men till it has received a name sacred among all peoples. Since I have learnt that it is allowed to man, without degrading his reason, to people the universe and interpret it by his dreams, I live wholly in the contemplation of the universe; and when the sight of the misery and crime in the world bruises my heart and shakes ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... mercy, nor compunction towards her, such as arose in many men's bosoms after a little time, and have been rife ever since both in writers and readers. The Detection is without ruth, and assumes the most criminal and degrading motives throughout. Its intention clearly is to convince Scotland, England, and the world of Mary's utter depravity, and the impossibility of any excuse for her or argument in her favour. The strong and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the names of Magistrates and Justices of the Peace. Such native thieves in some instances ceasing to be hirelings in the criminal business, trade on their own, but it is not clear what purpose it is intended to serve by subjecting native pedestrians to the degrading requirement of carrying passes when they are not in charge ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... to Reynolds all days were sacred—sacred to work; that is, to the expression of his best. Why should you cease to express your holiest and highest on Sunday? Ah, I know why you don't work on Sunday! It is because you think that work is degrading, and because your sale and barter is founded on fraud, and your goods are shoddy. Your week-day dealings lie like a pall upon your conscience, and you need a day in which to throw off the weariness of that slavery under which you live. You are not free yourself, and you insist ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... natural; but all who looked beneath the surface well knew that Prussia was overthrown before the first shot was fired. She was the victim of a deadening barrack routine, of official apathy or corruption, and of a degrading policy which dulled ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... lose. As we have seen, force ruled the world, and the common people had no voice in their government. The workers were looked down upon by the members of the fighting class, who never did a stroke of work themselves and considered honest toil as degrading. In fact, as one writer has said, the only respectable trade in Europe in those days was what we ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... he may merit by his bad conduct; and as for the present Governor of Tennessee, his wholesale abuse of the American party, towards whose members, without a single exception, he has indulged in language which ought not to be tolerated within the precincts of Billingsgate, no epithet is too low, too degrading, or disgraceful, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... first place, then, horse-racing, in itself, is neither degrading nor anything else that is bad; a race is a beautiful and exhilarating spectacle, and quiet men, who never bet, are taken out of themselves in a delightful fashion when the exquisite thoroughbreds thunder past. No sensible man supposes for a moment that owners and trainers ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... freedom of their inter course, was frankly avowed to Marmaduke, while the other continued profoundly hid in the bosom of his friend, The last was nothing more than pride. To the descend ant of a line of soldiers, commerce, even in that indirect manner, seemed a degrading pursuit; but an insuperable obstacle to the disclosure existed in the prejudices ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Ministers of those Courts had demanded their passports to retire from the Court of St. James. Napoleon had done more than that. The disturber of mankind had subverted the government of Portugal, but that magnanimous Prince, Don Pedro, had emigrated with his Court to the Brazils, rather than submit to the degrading chains of such a master. His Majesty, the King of Great Britain, had offered the Americans reparation, immediately and spontaneously, for the unauthorised attack upon the Chesapeake, but the American government taking advantage of the state of affairs in Europe, were endeavoring ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger |
